Work Overview

Dance of the Wild Men: Composed in 1919, images of dancing wild
men are evoked not only by the title of the work but also by
performance directions that include "Fiercely, with the utmost
intensity", "furiously", and "bang" (the keyborad). Always an
extremely popular work, it was performed at the time by visiting
concert artist Benno Moiseiwitsch to whom it is dedicated. A
highly chromatic work of almost intense savagery, it is built on
a number of small motives with changing tonalities anchored by
pedal points. The chromatic sections are in the nature of
episode.